My Errant Brother: A Tintin Origins story
by Errant Kitten
Summary: Where is Tintin from? Who raised him?Why does he wear pantaloons instead of big-boy pants? What if he had a sister, a normal, petulant girl who is annoyed because her heroic brother the reporter/detective abandoned her?


That day on Wisconsin Avenue, in Georgetown, a trendy neighborhood in Washington, D.C., the United States' capital city, I dropped my bagel as well as my jaw, sitting at an outside table at Marvelous Market.

"What is it, Nat?" My girlfriend Joanne, exuberant as only a Pittsburgh-raised hairdresser could be. "You okay? You checking out that dorky guy with the duck's ass in the middle of his head?"

I pointed, and my mouth opened wider.

"Dude, he's probably gay. Look at the bear type he's with, that beard and the sailor hat. And the little white dog. They are mincing along. They're flaming queens. Your gaydar's broke, Natalie."

When I saw Tintin again, after so many years, it just blew me away. The last time I saw him, we were vaulting the big stone wall of the orphan's home in Ghent, dodging the cruel strap of crazed Abbott Laurent…for the last time.

"Natalie, I will never let that animal hurt us again." Therapists have told me that I expected too much of my ten year old brother, he who remembered when Papa had dropped us off at the Home some years ago.

And I'd always felt protected by my older brother! He'd tried to shield me and other orphans not even related to us from the proclivities and punishments of the monastery's residents—but it had not been easy, until we'd finally escaped. I was but seven. It's amazing that I remember so much.

Tintin (then called Georges) had somehow gotten us a fare to Brussels, and then we'd befriended a pleasant baker and his wife. Georges—now Tintin—was like that. Everyone liked him. And he had a quick mind.

Where did "Tintin" come from? "Call me Tintin" he told Monsieur Molineaux after he'd delivered some rolls and cakes, and arranging to continue to do so, as well as helping out around the bakery, in return for allowing us to stay in their cellar.

"This is my sister, Natalie St. Croix?" And is that your surname as well? The baker had asked this, but Georges insisted on being called only Tintin. It was news to me as well, but I adapted fast to peculiar changes.

Was it after my brother, in his thirteenth year, exposed embezzling officials at our local Festival of Flanders, that there was a realization that he was not destined to be an apprentice baker?

After a heated argument with Monsieur Molineaux, my brother disappeared the next day, just before dawn, leaving me a note and half the cash reward he'd gotten from a local newspaper for writing a lengthily account of the Festival's irregularities.

"I will see you soon, Natalie, but I am leaving Belgium." We all thought it ridiculous. How far could a thirteen year old boy get, even one as precocious as my brother, he had the franc equivalent of less than two hundred euros.

And I never saw him again. I was eleven, and I didn't see Tintin again for twelve and a half years. I saw newspaper accounts of his exploits in France and England, discovering Red Rackham's Treasure, going to the Moon…and I wrote to him a dozen times! But nothing. And he was not at a fixed address!

Not that I would've chased him down. Tintin had done his best for me, I surmised. After leaving school (I also, was not interested in a baking career, to the bitter awareness of Monsieur Molineaux).

I became an au pair, and after a pleasant stay with a wealthy family in Switzerland, was hired permanently as a nanny (Fervent Catholics, there were seven little ruffians to keep me occupied.)

And when my employer found work as vice-consul in the Swiss embassy in Washington, on I came! And what a pleasant visit until I had this jarring, unpleasant family reunion.

Could I have just returned to my bagel, and gossiping with Joanne about the loutish Capitol Hill aide she was seeing? Or the young attorneys we'd flirted with at Nathan's the night before? Possibly.

But I had to know. I stood up, and perversely, I called out my brother's birth name.

"Georges? Is that you?" I waved. And walked forward, ignoring the loudly protesting Joanne. "It's me, Natalie, your SISTER!"

And of course, he looks first at his eh, dark bearded paramour, and then at me and the first thing he says is, "At home they call me Tintin."

Which of course was a complete lie. He called himself Tintin!

But a moment later Tintin came over, wearing an ill-fitted blue sweater over a faded white shirt, and suffered himself to be hugged by me. Though I felt like slapping him. How dare he abandon me in the dreary city of Ghent, in a boring country like Belgium, while he travels the world?

I had a psychotherapist (who later had to terminate, as he claimed he'd fallen in love with me) who said I should be thankful that Tintin had freed me from the orphanage, but I honestly think a young man as resourceful and intelligent as my brother could have taken me along…

When I read of Tintin's discovery of opium in crab tins (or cans, as they're called here in the States) I was resentful. I would have loved to assist on that story!

"Natalie, it's good to see you." Tintin said. He turned to his friend, the sailor fellow. "Captain Haddock, this is my sister, Natalie St. Croix."

"Blistering Barnacles!" the unshaved Popeye exhorted. "I didn't know you had a sister. Is St. Croix your surname, Tintin? Funny I should ask you this, after all these years."

"No, they call me…"

"Tintin. Yes, he was born that way." I helped. And my schizophrenic ducks-assed brother looked at me gratefully.


End file.
